Team:CLS CLSG UK/Contribution
Contribution
New Parts
Given we were not able to complete lab work this year, a large part of our project was thinking about how we can create a unique and innovative idea, but also create tools that can contribute to future iGEM teams. The first way in which we did this was by updating the kill switch pages.
Our new kill switch was inspired by a previous one using the same MazF-MazE toxin-antitoxin system. This circuit, developed by CCU_Taiwan in 2017, had potential, and their lab work confirmed their predictions. While the kill switch is effective, relying on fact that MazE and MazF have differing cellular degradation rates as a parameter in the triggering of the kill switch creates an issue. This problem is that no bacteria are able to survive for a very long time no matter the conditions, as their lab work shows. This doesn’t pose an issue for containment but it does for the sustainability of the kill switch as well as the sustainability of any long term bioengineering based solution that hopes to use their system. Our new system, utilising the same toxin-antitoxin system but putting each protein under the control of different promoters has allowed us to overcome this shortcoming. Of course, we were unable to validate this through lab work but we hope that a future iGEM team is able to use and test our construct to add to their project but also show that it works as an improvement on the original construct.
In order to make it clear to future teams we added details to the existing pages relating to the kill switch, both on the pages from the 2010 Newcastle team who first uploaded the toxin antitoxin system (BBa_K302034) as well as the main parts uploaded by the CCU_Taiwan team in 2017(BBa_K2292006, BBa_K2292002, BBa_K2232025). To all these pages we added details of the improvements the new system provides over the one detailed above and then a link to our complete kill switch was also included. This means that teams would be able to see all variations and best judge what is most suitable for their project. Furthermore, we made sure our parts were categorised correctly and now appear in their categories in the catalogue. This will ensure that the parts are available for use by other teams who are browsing the catalogue either in search of something specific or simply looking for inspiration. As well as adding our kill switch parts to their correct categories we also made sure to do this for all our parts, especially our synthetic adhesin - it being method for adhering and immobilising bacteria that is new to iGEM we felt that it was especially important that this was documented correctly and the page on the registry includes our lab results for it so that teams can see the effectiveness of the construct. We hope that this will allow future teams to use and improve our work and ultimately stand on our shoulders to reach even greater heights.
Hardware
Throughout our hardware project, we wanted to not only develop an idea which is groundbreaking and innovative, but also one which can contribute greatly to future teams. Primarily, we used the Kickstat potentiostat developed by Orlando Hoilett at Purdue University, and modified it to allow for all the code to run through only a single SD card. We have uploaded all our arduino code onto our GitHub so that future iGEM teams can easily design and create cheap aptasensors with SWV capabilities. In addition, we realised that there were almost no standardised protocols for aptamer immobilisation and so designed one for usage by future iGEM teams. Please see our hardware page for further details.
Education
During the initial stages of our research, we found that the High Schools Handbook by the Calgary 2014 team was very helpful. However, in order to test knowledge and understanding, instructors often had to create individual assignments based off of the guidebook. In order to save time and make this process more efficient, we created a series of quizzes which new iGEMmers could use to familiarise themselves with the basics of synthetic biology. Please see our handbook quizzes page for further details.